/5eg/ - Fifth Edition General

Can someone point me in the direction of a Warforged Stat block please?

I'd like to throw one into my campaign somewhere.

The eberon UA.

5egmegaanon.github.io/5etools/races.html#Warforged

There's no cure for stupid, you'll need to use a crutch. Perhaps spelling things out to them that would be obvious to their characters, and presenting a few simple options for them to choose from would grease things along. Outright saying what ideas might occur to their characters may hobble their agency, but maybe they can work up from that.

If based on 3.pf tiers
Most everything in tier 3 and 4 with the occasional 2 (Lore wizard).
Bard and wizard are top of the heap
Since combat is short paladin is amazing because burst.
Sorcerer is one of the worst (not unusable though, just a little underwhelming) due to being a worse wizard. Martials are better in combat since there are very few ways to end combat outside of HP loss and consistency. PHB ranger is garbage but got fixed in UA.

I'd argue that it would be under-powered.

I'm suffering from a similar problem as well, and it's pretty bad.
>Players head into dungeon
>Don't make intelligent decisions at all
>Complain when something bad happens

Outstanding: Have the ability to easily do what it says on the box, but also can be optimized to be more powerful than similar others at their specialties or have a strong solution for anything.
>Bard, Paladin, Wizards that aren't evocation, enchantment, or transmutation
Good: Does what you'd want it to do well, competitive all around without hard optimization.
>Anything else
Okay: Classes that work, but need some optimization to keep up with their contemporaries and have only a few tricks up their sleeve that allow them to not just be straight up weaker.
>Sorcerer, Hunter Ranger
Broken: Things that can't keep up with their contemporaries at all, don't function as full players aught, have nothing that can't be done better by others easily.
>PHB Beastmaster Ranger, Elemental Monk

Cheers.

Wouldn't you be able to heal yourself up to full? Actually, thinking about it you could even use it on your companions if you're extremely low and they're pretty healthy after a fight.

Should I stop putting details into environments? I really don't want to stop since that pissed me off about a past GM when he would say "its a normal room" and just expect us to know what he fucking means by that or worse "its barren" when out in a frozen landscape. Like not a single gatdamned patch of trees for the entire place but entire cities can survive close nearby?

I'm going to try to make a 'rival party' made up of classes they didn't pick and try to see if some competition puts a fire beneath their asses.

Is literally the only CR 6 creature that can be summoned by a Conjure Fey spell, at default level, an Annis Hag?

Sorry, but even lore wizard doesn't have the raw mechanical game breaking power for tier 2.

Everything is 3-4, varied slightly within those rankings.

Most summon spells are retarded, Conjure Celestial hits 1 creature, and can be upcast for 1 more.
Couatl, Unicorn

Wizards are clearly third or second place, after bards and druids. All have CR busting nonsense, all have Planar Binding, all have level 9 spells, all have encounter wreckers but the bard and druid have more survivability and defense, plus healing etc. Not that healing is tremendously important but it is just one of the many ways where wizards can't match their breadth. Also Moon Druids have amazing damage sponginess and combat ability, and a CR 1 dire wolf at level 2, and a CR 5 elemental at level 10, is honestly not that bad for what they get without spell slots.

+1 AC, don't have to eat/drink/sleep.

Hm? Shapeshifting/polymorph stuff is even stronger than in 3e, and planar binding is likewise even more powerful and open ended. 9/9 guys are probably tier 1, clerics and sorcs are probably tier 2 or 3 (because they don't get the pokemon element).

It's a natural melee attack that takes an action and does 1d6 damage necrotic damage and gives you the same amount as hit points. Using one allies is basically just equivalent exchange of HP between the two of you.

If you build a warlock around using that attack, you're building a warlock around doing very little damage while also being moderately difficult to kill.

>planar binding
>relevant before Gate

Level 9 spell*

No, no they aren't, and implying as much says you don't know one, or both, of the editions.

Concentration alone says you're wrong.

But wouldn't that be fun?

Why is elemental monk so bad?

Anyone got the Murder in Baldur's Gate PDF? Didn't see it in the mega link (unless I'm blind?).

Poor interaction with the core class's action and resource economies.

The problem with detail is that to make detail actually mean anything, it has to be at least a little interesting. But any set dressing thats interesting is automatically suspicious and gets picked apart by the players looking for where you've hidden the plus seventeen sword of goblin buggery that would logically be hidden behind the bookcase.

I prefer to describe very, very little until a player asks to look around the room. It definitely makes it a little awkward, since someone has to basically say 'I look around the room' or some varient, but it means that players get your environment description when they ask for it, which tends to make them less suspicious of details in my experience.

Try to make interesting details and window dressings relevant in at least some way, and if something is just window dressing, try not to leave open ended reasons.

I like to use the player characters to help do this sometimes. For example, I might be in a place with weird runes all over the floor just for that 'im summoning satan bitches' feel. But telling them a place is covered in glowing magic shit is automatically an indication that my players will start picking at shit.

So on describing the room, i can describe the runes and then i can then say something like 'Gargle-More Cockgobbler, with his knowledge of Satanic magic pacts, dismisses the runes as placating messages to the Demonic forces, interesting only academically.

I was just describing the shit that was naturally there.
Place was originally a temple for some kind of cult, died out for some reason, then got taken over by a mad scientist/wizardly rat-folk (I really don't want to use the word skaven because that sets expectations. They're generally communal but highly aggressive towards individuals not apart of their large families. Combine with living underground they go mad real easy). So it was just generally demonic shit lining the walls, occasional shrines and altars to various gods, living arrangements and evidence of imprisonment (by the rat for experiments, not the dudes). They spent so much time looking at the odds and ends that I'm not sure what to do about. I don't want to remove them entirely, especially in dungeons to keep them on their toes, but is there any way to describe stuff in a short way but still get the information across to save time? Should I just flat out tell them things.

Action economy and the new spell features being overpriced hot garbage that doesn't do any sort of combos with the base monk features.

Seriously just use this.

Ki cost is too high. You better spend those Ki on stunning strike.

Sorry, I mean "Why did they make this so poorly? What was their thinking?"

I just don't understand it.

I completely overhauled the 5e warforged from the ebberon UA. They get way more shit now. Way, way more shit. It took like a week and 4 versions working with other group members to finally come up with the result. Fuck the baseline warforged

Since I am sure a Pathmonkey is going to chime in at some point, I am only referring to 3e.

Polymorph is concentration keyword, but offers a crazy upgrade. Obviously people will differ, but Polymorph actually adds supernatural abilities and hit dice, that's frikkin huge.

Magic Jar is drastically better than its 3e equivalent, and more equivalent of True Mind Switch.

Planar Binding is a largely unique effect from the 3e perspective -- you can potentially turn whatever that is a fey, celestial, elemental or fiend that you can incapacitate or even just trap into your pokemon, rather than just ones of a very narrow hit dice range (which would be borderline useless by 5e standards, as even an ordinary Deva would require a Greater Planar Binding). The tasks to which 3e Planar Binding can set creatures are much more specific, and less open ended, than 5e Planar Binding. Its a fuckin HUGE deal.

In general, people who think 5e 9/9 casters lose out in tier wars neglect the very different role between monster hit dice, character level, and challenge rating in 3e and 5e -- a level 17-18 character in 5e is more in the CR 7-12 range, and being able to upjump that is a big deal.

I'd say remove some of the set pieces, but you want to keep them. If they're having fun exploring I'd say let em keep poking at nothing.

Are you having enemies patrol the dungeon? You can either do this, set some sort of time limit, or do as suggests and have a character just know they're only set pieces.

But seriously it sounds like you may have too many set pieces, or that you're stressing some sort of importance to them when describing them that doesn't exist.

> 5e Polymorph
> supernatural ability
???

Wait, fuck, the UA is tomorrow?

I thought that was some guy shitposting. Back into cryosleep.

Swashbukler is pretty MAD what should I prioritize?

Not exactly a fix version so much as add bells and whistles to the existing version.
It's an issue that was noticed only well after publishing the book. It made it through it's iterations of playtest without being caught.

Yeah, it's pretty upsetting.
I had some good fun making an air elemental monk/tempest cleric though. Those extra spells from cleric gave him some good utility.

It's more upsetting to me that none of the spells combo at all with base class features like said.
Back before the errata the water whip being a bonus action was cool because you could combo it.

Honestly, making the elemental abilities combo and make more of them bonus actions would've just been miles better. They didn't even need to be spells. Fuck. Why not give an elemental attunement that effects your flurry of blows?

People have been mentioning it for the last four days. Just realizing that now?

3e polymorph is a nice buff, but it doesn't give you the forms of superior hit dice, supernatural abilities, etc. 5e polymorph lets you use level for challenge rating, which is a drastic upgrade.

In an earlier edition I had a character who was (short version) an academic archaeologist who employed a hitherto forgotten martial style they'd uncovered that mixed magic and weaponry. Is there any way to do that in 5e at 1st level?

It's not that MAD? Not much more than other classes anyway.
You can have 20 dex, 14 con, and 20 cha easily.
Focus dex, obviously, then cha so you get the most uses out of your abilities.

Dex first, Cha second, a one level dip into Dragon Sorcerrer third and Con fourth.

There's nothing wrong with flat-out telling them things. Though again, i prefer to have players get information 'from themselves' so to speak.

I might advise you that your dungeons shouldn't be static if you can help it. If its been taken over, people should live there.

Players shouldnt be able to just hang out in one room poking about. Thats stuff you do once you've cleared the dungeon (I.e. "You spend many hours exploring the rooms and shizz. Felchcrust the Paladin finds X, Booberella Roguesworth finds Y).

Try to make your dungeons more dynamic. Enemies should be patrolling or making noise. If a fight looks hard for the enemy to win, clever enemies should have one of their number slip away to get reinforcements, which gives your players incentive to want to hunt him down before he warns the entire dungeon.

Dont be afraid to have your players fuck up. If they go into one dungeon, fuck around in the first room and let someone go off and spend hours getting the rest of the dungeon ready (or killing the princess sacrifice they were meant to save the life of) they might be kinda put down. But losing can be fun! (They now have to explain to the king of the land that they fucked up and his princess is dead, making them outlaws) and maybe theyll learn a lesson for next time.

Even if your players are in an empty room, consider giving them hooks that point to the next one. They can hear screams echoing from down one corridor. There is a trail of blood leading to a wall (implying a hidden door). A key is on the ground, it doesnt match any lock in the room right now. Etc.

Honestly if you did this early on you can booming blade fuckers and walk away. Plus your AC would receive a nice bump early on. Take shield spell, and whatever cantrips/other first level spell you think would be useful.

Making all the abilities into bonus actions would actually justify their ki cost.

Some of the abilities like ''Fangs of the fire snake'' should be comparable to cantrips tho and as such free of cost.

Mixed magic and weaponry how? There are a ton of styles of gish in 5e

I agree.
Something that is comparable to sun-soul's light balls should also have their elemental attunement equivalents.

Tome or Hexblade warlock.

Otherwise play an Arcana Cleric with the SCAG cantrips.
Or better just start your first level as a Monk and then go Arcana Cleric from there.

>Are you having enemies patrol the dungeon?
I do roll for enemies coming to encounter but I could always set an actual schedule for them.
I'll tone it down some because I can't tell if they are enjoying it. They say the like it but they' don't seem to engrossed into anything thus far. They don't roleplay with each other for development, anything with anybody else has been one note thus far, they don't seem to enjoy combat too much but given how we've only just hit 3 that could change. Dungeon crawling seems to bore them so all I have left to try is puzzles/riddles. I'll keep trying and working but i'm a bit stalled as to where I should try and guide the game and its tone as a whole since i'm leaving it entirely open for what they want to do exactly.
Also, how often should I hand out notes for specific info as opposed to saying it out loud.

The ONLY problem I can foresee in making them all bonus actions would be the ability to nova with the way the cost currently works. If you got rid of being able to ramp them up in power by dumping more ki, it might be okay.

Playing Bladesinger who specializes on close range spells. What are the best melee spells? burning hands? Thunderweave?

Why would you go Bladesinger instead of Eldritch Knight for that concept? What would be the befits? Sure you're the full caster, but you're still pretty squishy aren't you?

Using mild divination to determine where you should be to positioned to avoid harm and deal damage, and later teleportation to be in the right place. If you've seen step by step diagrams in fighting guides, imagine warping between them without the interstitial movement.

The only Fey, yes, but conjure Fey also allows you to conjure a fey spirit in the shape of a beast, up to a CR 6

So you can conjure a mammoth like this

There are honestly few close combat wizard spells man. Its not a very robust concept.

>you're still pretty squishy aren't you?

Depends. He'll be squishy, but at AC 30, squishy only matters on a crit

Eldritch knight/divination wizard multiclass

Oh good catch.

>Using mild divination to determine where you should be to positioned

For example?

>and later teleportation to be in the right place

For example?

Summoning a Brontossaurus (CR 5), with it being a Gargantuan Beast, is also pretty fun

You can always just straight out ask your player's if they're having fun I guess. Honestly they just seem either a little stiff or just boring themselves. Giving them good goals and reasons to RP more should help.

For notes it depends honestly, if your characters are "meta gamey" or secretive I'd say more notes for information like items and knowledge. This may also encourage more RP.

I was hoping for something Int-based as he was an academic, but Arcana Cleric sounds close. Is it OK to refluff Cleric magic as not from gods?

Clerics cast spells by "having their souls awakened to the divine power of creation around them"

Not by having it be "from the gods", but by "sharing it"

Well you could fluff it as a belief in magic it self or maybe a quasi-taoist priest.
Seriously read up on Taoism, it fits well in most magical settings when you want a cleric that doesn't serve a god.

No refluffing necessary, the only editions in which a deity is largely required for divine magic is 1e (mostly) and 4e (mostly). Worth mentioning that the reason for the latter is that the divine power source is more tightly linked to gods themselves, and some things priorly described as clerics (Athasian elemental clerics) were presented as a different power source entirely, and templar were arcane.

OD&D, BECMI, 2e, 3e, and 5e 'atheist' clerics are fine.

>Using mild divination to determine where you should be

Like, you'd cast a spell and get a flash of you standing with your blade in a particular position making a particular attack, and immediately move to that position attacking in that way.

>and later teleportation to be in the right place

Later, rather than moving to the place you say you would teleport there, positioned so your weapon was already in the enemy.

Eldritch knight/diviner is all you need

Or really just a diviner with weapon proficiencies

One person lived there and they just didn't go to the side that he lived on. The other half was for keeping prisoners and test subjects.

I'll do more time lapse stuff for the purposes of exploring.
The one dude who lived there was the only smart one and was working mostly on a flesh golem and a flesh eating virus.
They were only down there because a couple of wyrmlings were keeping one of the players (who flaked the session) hostage to make them clear the area around their soon to be new home.
I've yet to determine which, if any are metagamey. I tried to make characters with them specifically so that they're human beings as opposed to cardboard cut outs but they already came with backstories and I was helping out a guy new to 5e so I didn't have time to do it with em. I'll probably have to have a little something on the side for them so they can get a bit of depth of character.
Thanks for the help by the way.

>Like, you'd cast a spell and get a flash of you standing with your blade in a particular position making a particular attack, and immediately move to that position attacking in that way.

Cool, what spell are you thinking about using for that?

>Later, rather than moving to the place you say you would teleport there, positioned so your weapon was already in the enemy.

Right on, how are you going to make that work mechanically?

Sounds like in all ways you are better off with Eldritch Knight -- and this is coming from a guy who will otherwise always vociferously argue in favor of Bladesinger as the better of the two gishes.

one of my players refuses to pay attention but also gets hung up on minor details. they'd just rescued some hostages who were on the other side of a pitfall (a pretty small one) and she literally wanted to spend like 20 minutes figuring out how to get them to the other side. i had to hand wave it after five minutes bc it was going no where, and then she got obsessed w barring a door that couldn't be barred and refused to leave the empty dungeon without barring it? she kept asking "are there chairs near by" and shit dozens of times after being told they were in an empty hallway and i had to put my foot down. and then it's worse in town! has to ask every person they meet every question she can think of and take extensive notes, it slows down the game to a crawl and she can't even pay attention to keep the details straight. she's confused by the plot of LOST MINES OF PHANDELVER! she won't even look at her spells outside of the session despite playing a cleric. they spent 3 sessions at level 2 because she just could NOT stop holding everything up, constantly tries to use guidance to divine the correct choice of action (yes i've corrected her each time) and prefers to open every combat with "now how can i use thamaturgy to knock them all down or scare them". every time! i spent three hours one on one with her going over each spell and teaching her spellcasting and actions and how her shield takes up an arm and that she's able to fight w a short sword and all her racial and class abilities and she STILL can't keep it straight. i'm this close to asking her to leave bc she drags out each session and is completely unwilling to study her spells and class, and she just doesn't pay attention even when she's asking every single person completely irrelevant questions!

i know i ranted but FUCK i'm losing my mind, we should be at cragmaw castle and we only just cleared out the redbrand hideout after two sessions in it.

Can't you do some funky shit with banishment+magic circle+planar binding?

Wizards have ritual-casting-from-book for essentially more spells known, a load of great rituals to go with that, portent for gauranteeing enemies fail save throws,

Heck, wizards can even put every single wizard spell in their book with enough money. And they have arcane recovery, for just a few more spells, though land druid gets a double-arcane-recovery.

I'd have to give first place to lore bard, however, for having +4 skills over wizard,cutting words, expertises, jack-of-all-trades (Which comes iwth a small boost to initiative), 1d8 hitdice and light armour (and can easily get moderately armoured), even bigger skillboosts with inspiration, stealing spells and having a still pretty good spell list with some heals to back it up, even if the level 6 magical secrets it's practically almost mandatory to pick up counterspell.
It's rogue skillmonkeying, on a full caster.

If a wizard needs more armour, they can easily just multiclass 1 or 2 levels of fighter. Druid can't do that. Wizard has shield. Wild shape's effectiveness drops off after the first few levels, and druid's spellcasting list is.. Inferior.
I'd give druid a close third, closer to paladin and cleric, but to be honest the whole thing is pretty close. Could even say it depends on campaign.

So my players are very active in searching through rooms for hidden shit. I always have atleast 1 secret room in a dungeon, but they seem kind of disappointed when they go through 5 rooms in a dungeon and encounter no secrets.

Should i just incorporate more traps, secret rooms, hidden treasure, etc etc?

A friend of mine recommended giving them an item that has charges and can be used in a room to tell them if there are any hidden things in the room, it wouldn't tell them where or what the secret was, just that there was something. It would X charges and would refresh on sunrise.

Thoughts?

item sounds neat, but after it runs out they're going to obsess over the rooms they didn't use it on.

I'd say just start giving them random booby prizes, add traps, or just a "you have searched the room and found nothing"

So they want a Wand of Secrets?

I don't really like the sound of the item. It'll drive players to search and search until they find it.

I think it'd be better if it's an item that gives them a clue as to where it might be, but doesn't specify an area. Say, they look into magical scrying orb and they see lots of red. So there may be a secret somewhere with lots of red.
Or they might see bricks, so they should expect there to be something hidden behind bricks at some point.

It's not a big deal, but I think general dungeon-wide clues are better than a clue as to what room it's in.

>Eldritch knight/diviner is all you need

That sounds about right, how much of each would be good?

I don't rate portent highly as a wizard thing, because you get it with 2 levels in, and I know of no one who argues that the Diviner is a good specialty overall aside from that single trick. Having portent is not a strong indicator that you intent to go all the way as a wizard.

>Wild shape's effectiveness drops off after the first few levels,

Land druids aren't intended to be switch hitting tanks. Moon druid's wild shape comes and goes, but the big levels are at at 2, 10 (CR 5 elemental-ness, ahoy!), and 20 (borderline unkillable, though of course at the end of most campaigns). My question is what midpoint between 2, 10, and 20 do you think wild shape is unusually bad at? While 20 is largely irrelevant, 2 and 10 are truly solid marking points.

>and druid's spellcasting list is.. Inferior.

Minorly so. They still get Planar Binding and Shapechange. They're pokemasters who don't need no man, can use area shutdown spells, can upgrade to a much higher CR or last very long against lower CRs. The list of resistances and immunities they can get -- without further buff spells -- from elemental form is especially amazing, and a much underestimated form of defense.

2 diviner

How do I make a spooky dungeon-crawl campaign? I want something with a similar feel to Curse of Strahd, but more sandbox-ish.

It sounds like they want to find more things, in which case throwing a few bits of junk or extra coin their way as consolation would likely do the trick.
One possibility if you want to go the secret finding item route would be some sort of animal that guides them to the right room so they don't waste time checking ones that don't have anything, but the animal won't leave its cage unless they clear the dungeon/defeat all the enemies so they go through the dungeon first and don't bother with the treasure hunt until afterwards.

CoS is a sandbox.

Read lots of horror novels and incorporate their writing style into your world-building and environment descriptions.

If you have two levels, you might as well keep getting levels. If you start with wizard levels, you clearly intend to go wizard all the way because wizard's first level is one of the worst if not the worst, not that that's a big deal. Otherwise, maybe a full class could take a two level dip, but at least that's more tempting than ever taking a dip of druid. Unless you're a life cleric.

And, there are very few ways to get enemies to fail saving throws. IF you're lucky, you can find a way to get enemies to have disadvantage, but in any case it's a serious advantage to ensure something will fail your save-or-die spell.

I recall it's more around level 5 to 19 that the problems lie with the health gained being less, probably having more encounters a day and the attacks being not awfully powerful.. Though I suppose it might still be more damage than a cantrip. Elemental forms are certainly good and seems to deal with problems of not dealing damage, though it does use all uses of wildshape at once.
Well, since you can still concentrate, maybe it's not so bad with switching forms, though I imagine enemies are more inclined to ignore you and aim for the squishies.

The wizard mostly has to make it up in the spell list, and I'd definitely say druid is lacking quite a bit on spellcasting. No counterspell, very few rituals of note..

I'd at least say druid is better if enemies don't play entirely smart, given the druid's a sort-of-tank-sometimes.

Any tips on making a slightly more modernized setting in 5e? I am very interested in making an early 1900s campaign involving some cthulhu mythos and all sorts of supernatural happenings, but I'm struggling to come up with ways to make magic work in this setting.

Make it all underground, focus on what your players see and can't see, play spooky music, kill them off one by one.

So, the rituals...
Alarm, Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic, Find Familiar, Identify, Illusory Script, Tenser's Floating Disk, Unseen Servant, Gentle Repose, Feign Death, Leomund's Tiny Hut, Phantom Steed, Water Breathing, Contact Other Plane, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Drawmij's Instant Summons

Not all of those are great, but the best ones are in there. Druid has a bunch, but most of them are extremely situational.

Leomund's Tiny Hut, Find Familiar, Alarm, Identify and Detect Magic should all show up a lot and be really useful, and the wizard doesn't even need to prepare them.

Honestly, I'll have to admit druids have a lot more combat versatility just on grounds of making themselves a load tankier and still hitting things, but I guess if you do a lot of out of combat stuff and some of the things on the wizard spell list can help a lot, the wizard spells will probably be more useful more often.

Not to mention Druid doesn't get wish abuse at level 17, but that's too far in the future. At that point, wizards get an at-will level 1 and level 2 spell. And druids are near getting archdruid.

I'd at the very least say it'd be better to have a druid AND and wizard AND a bard, and which is the best can be campaign dependent, but.. Hm. I don't really know for sure. Don't see a lot of druids, yet alone good ones.

I rather enjoy this one.
dropbox.com/s/rm45ue70ve5w9n7/The Monk.docx?dl=0

My first point is have you heard of Call of Cthulu. Second point is just take inspiration for what the PHB says. People began being born with magic, people learn to imitate it. With the growing of magic divine presences began to be felt, and not so divine.

Firearms are already present at the time so give martials firearms proficiency. Use the rules in the DMG but if you want the gritty options Matt Mercer's Gunslinger is not bad, cause it has misfire scores and mechanics to deal with it. Not overpowered or anything.

Barbarian could have a path with just wild firing, Paladins smite on shot, yeah it could be done.

There's a 3.5 splatbook called "Heroes of Horror" that has tips, tables and other helpful stuff on how to run a horror campaign. Here's a link if you're interested.

dnd.rem.uz/3.5 D&D Books/Heroes Of Horror.pdf

Why do you guys prefer 5e to osr? I've only (poorly) DM'd 5e so far and when I get more familiar with DM'ing I'd like to try running an OSR hexcrawl. What are some pros/cons to 5e over other games?

Sorry for newfag but what is OSR?